“Well Gerald Ford, he went to Michigan, he was an All-American center, I know that,” Ford said, “and he was the only president to ever be put into office without being elected.”

Gerald Ford III is 26 years old, a 6-foot-2, 240-pound outside linebacker, and his campaign trail took him to Saturday’s Tampa Regional Combine, with an invitation on the line to the April 12-13 Super Regional Combine at, of course, Ford Field.

Gerald Ford III has learned that sometimes you are forced to run past heartache and heartbreak to chase your dream, sometimes there are cruel fates along the way testing your mettle, making you stop to ask “Why Me?” and wallow in self-pity and defy you to persevere.

Gerald Ford III’s father, Gerald Ford Jr., is on dialysis and has been waiting four years for a kidney transplant. So it falls on the oldest of his five sons to work three jobs to help pay the bills and, ever since the woman who was wife and mother moved out, serve as a caretaker for his father and 16-year-old brother Elijah.

Why him?

In high school he trekked an hour and change from Otisville, N.Y., to Don Bosco Prep in Ramsey, N.J., where he played with Matt Simms, before playing at Iona College only to see the Gaels drop the football program after his junior season.

“It was a dagger to the heart,” Ford said.

Why him?

“And a lot of things happened that year in terms of football and in terms of life, so it was a big shock,” Ford said.

“My senior year of high school, my father had a stroke, so that was in the midst of all my football recruiting visits. It progressively got worse to the point where he’s on disability. My junior year, after the program got cut, my dad actually had kidney failure. He couldn’t go to work [as a computer architect] at all anymore. He’s still on dialysis to this day. I currently take care of my father and one of my younger brothers. I help out with the bills over there, whatever disability doesn’t cover.”

So he has worked seven days a week.

“I’m a personal trainer from 6-10, and then from 11-8, I work at another gym full time, and I have benefits at my full-time [job] obviously, and sometimes on the side I did a little bit of IT consulting,” Ford said.

The summer after Iona dropped football, his mother bolted for Tampa with his youngest brother, Thomas, now 10.
Why him?

“When it rains, it pours,” Ford said.

After graduating from Iona in 2010 with a degree in finance, he got his wish to play one last season at Pace University, where he was working on a graduate degree in computer science. For the sake of the team, he consented to move to defensive end (two sacks), and endured an 0-9 season in 2012.

“It was pretty bad, I can’t even lie,” Ford said.

After the season, he had a pro day at Fordham and went to a regional combine, but he tore his hamstring before the showcase and his times were significantly affected.

Why him?

But here’s what Gerald Ford III wants to know now: Why not him?

“After Pace, I gave myself a two-year window and this is the second year of it,” he said. “I’m just trying to make the most of it.”

Why not a boy who spent the first eight years of his life in the South Bronx dreaming the improbable NFL dream?

“All throughout high school, college, you know, always been in the underdog role, I always had to fight for whatever I had,” Ford said, “so I never expected my road to the NFL to be anything less than a struggle.”

You ask Gerald Ford III if he is an animal coming off the edge and he tells you: “Absolutely!”

He stayed with the parents of his fiancee, Amanda, outside Tampa for the combine. He didn’t see his mother while there.

“The contact is very sparse. … I haven’t seen her in at least a year-and-a-half, or two years now,” Ford said. “I text and ask her if I can speak to my brother, but once in a while, maybe on a holiday I’ll get a call from my little brother. I did a lot of babysitting and diaper changing when he was young.”

His father played defensive end at Albany before transferring to Fordham, where his career ended after one year when his oldest boy was born.

Ford lives with Amanda in Jamaica Estates in Queens, where the toughest moments come when he thinks about the hell his father endures.

“Just worried that if he didn’t get a transplant soon that this is not an adequate way to live life for him,” Ford said.

The football field is a sanctuary for him.

“All the pain and all the things I have to deal with, I don’t have to maintain that when I’m on the field,” Ford said.

“That’s when I can let my emotion really take over. I can play with the anger that I have, and I can deal with all the things that life has thrown at me, ’cause I’m allowed to let loose on the field. But in life, you have to have some restraint, and the field is where you can turn that switch off and just say, ‘This is where I let it out.’”

He flew home Sunday, and now waits for a most important call that will let him know if he gets a ticket to Detroit.

“They said, ‘Keep your phone on Thursday.’ Thursday’s when they make the phone call,” Ford said.